Is it just me or do more and more researchers misinterprate their own findings? They are not the only ones; apparently so do teachers. One of my teachers that was a marketing specialist from the UK showed us the following example in his course on 360 communication:
A given article states that research points out that on average 14 % of the world population interupt the sexual act for a phone call. To him this meant that the cell phone was becoming more and more important. Not being convinced I asked him what the numbers were before this research… silence…
So than how did he now if it decreased or increased? …silence…
My logic tells me it is exactly the other way around: considering the fact that we didn’t used to have voicemail or caller ID’s on our fixed phone means automatically that it was more crucial to anwer. Not that this is than automatically the case for the whole world but I do wonder why researches are interpreted like this?
What surprised me is that he is not the only one, way too often we see researches in newspapers that seem to draw invalid conclusions. It imediately makes me wonder: is this what our marketing strategies are based on?